This Sunday’s news talk shows were dominated by guests from four battleground states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — where both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are in a dead heat.
FiveThirtyEight’s presidential poll averages show Harris and Trump in a virtual tie in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, separated just by a few decimal points, and Trump ahead by 1.8 percent in Georgia.
Potential Election Certification Challenges
With just 16 days till election day, the closeness of the race has heightened uncertainty over whether the results will be respected by Trump and his supporters, who have falsely claimed that the 2020 elections were rigged.
Trump has not yet committed to respect the results of the race. In a recent interview on the PBD Podcast, hosted by Patrick Ben-David, Trump said, “If the election is not rigged, we’re going to win. If it is rigged, I guess that’s a different story.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that drones and snipers will secure the vote count on November 5 in Arizona, another battleground state where Trump leads by less than two percentage points, according to the FiveThirtyEight average.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, pledged to “follow the law and the constitution.” He said, “I’m gonna make sure that whoever wins this race, that is what gets certified.” In 2021, Raffensperger refused to reverse Trump’s loss in Georgia after the outgoing president called and asked him to “find 11,780 votes.”
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, also appearing on “Face the Nation,” said the election results will likely be available the day after polls close. Benson, a Democrat, who, like Raffensperger, will have to certify her state’s elections, said, “We will always prioritize accuracy and security over efficiency.”
In recent days, Benson has battled with Elon Musk on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, over what he claims is a discrepancy between registered and eligible voters. Benson’s office is investigating whether the Musk-funded America PAC violated state law.
Musk could also find himself in trouble in Pennsylvania. Gov. Josh Shapiro said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” did not dismiss the possibility that the Tesla founder could be investigated for his $1 million giveaway to random signatories of a petition campaign by his political action committee.
Harris surrogates were out in full force on today’s Sunday talk shows. Shapiro also appeared on ABC News’s “This Week,” where he was joined by two other Democratic governors, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin.
Whitmer warned that Trump is “already laying the groundwork to undermine the outcome of this election,” describing both the former president and his current running mate, JD Vance, as “election deniers.”
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, when asked by Margaret Brennan about the risk of election violence, said, “I trust that cooler heads will prevail…we will remember that at the end of the day, that contrary to what Donald Trump has suggested, our enemies are not within.”
The Ghost of Biden
On “Meet the Press,” Shapiro struggled when asked by host Kristen Wilker to name one key policy difference between Biden and Harris, and instead pivoted back to the contrast between Harris and Trump.
In an interview last week on Fox News, Harris also struggled to do the same. She stated emphatically, “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s.” But when pressed numerous times by Bret Baier to offer specifics of how she would differ from the president, Harris offered no specifics.
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